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All we are saying is give peace a chance
went John Lennon's cry for peace and if he was still with us he would probably sing it to leaders and rulers to commemorate innocent victims on the first anniversary of the tragic Tuesday. Was that carnage a horrible exception, or the rule of the future? The "never again" spoken by official lips on anniversaries of past conflicts have been supplemented by apocalyptic references to "axes of evil" and "gates of hell". Allies are split and sworn enemies align in Johannesburg to block proposals to promote renewable energy. Five years after Fukuyama's failed "end of history" theory [unless Fukuyama really meant that we would soon return to pre-history], the beauty of "and" has been supplemented by the tyranny of "or". Despite advances in communications, there is increasing difficulty in communicating, between countries, within countries, cities, neighbourhoods, homes. Despite progress in medicine, people are dying at an increasing rate by contagious illnesses. Despite advances in knowledge, humans are becoming increasingly ignorant, fanatic, prejudiced, fearful of anything and anyone different. Despite endless international meetings of governments, international bodies and sundry NGOs little is produced but carbon emissions, wish lists and riots. And everyone keeps blaming everyone else but their own pack, compatriots, people, colleagues, friends or selves. It sometimes looks as if there are two earths, one for us and one for the others. In a small but characteristic for human priorities incident, a passenger sued Air Canada in August for 5 million USD because they had lost his pet cat which was stowed in the luggage compartment. His alleged point was to punish airlines that "see companion animals as cargo or as luggage". Airlines should not, true, but I wonder was anyone sensitive enough to sue anybody for 5 million USD in the case of thousands of so-called "illegal" (as if legality was an option) immigrants that suffocate or freeze stowed away in containers, trucks or even, like "companion animals" in plane's luggage compartments?

In August, in what a friend called "ecotourism being recognised by the herald of capitalism", the Wall Street Journal, probably on the occasion of the International Year of Ecotourism, published an article on Ecotourism and chose 5 useful Ecotourism websites, including ECOCLUB.com. Is Ecotourism then accepted by the mainstream tourists and tourism providers, as a side-dish, or perhaps as a plaything for the affluent? Are some trying to portray it as such or take it there?  It does not matter, they, and ecotourism's critics by profession will soon loose interest when they understand that there is no real profit to be made; they will simply move on to the next fashionable thing. But our network will stay and grow stronger, to give real solutions to real problems, involving all those really interested in a better tourism (and a better world) under whatever label and prefix (responsible, sustainable, alternative, community tourism - see below), for a tourism that - beyond "tourism products", "stakeholders", "packages", "segments" and other hollow terms of the hour - gives humans, the environment and peace a chance.

- Antonis B. Petropoulos, Director, ECOCLUB S.A.

Cum Grano Salis*: 
" Indigenous Tourism is not just another marketing gimmick"

"...forms of tourism cannot be based on concept-driven tourism development such as ecotourism, sustainable tourism, nature tourism, cultural tourism, ethnotourism, etc. Instead they are based on a long-term analysis of the pros and cons of tourism development, recognizing and following collective decision-making processes, and integrated into our long-term realities and visions of sustainable use and access to collective goods. An essential component of this is the right to decline tourism development at any point in the development process. So when we talk about "Indigenous Tourism," it is not just another marketing gimmick, but a broad category of distinctive ways in which Indigenous Peoples choose to implement tourism on our own terms. "
Excerpt from "Declaration of The International Forum on Indigenous Tourism, Oaxaca, Mexico, March 18-20, 2002 "

*"Cum Grano Salis": latin for "with a grain of salt", phrase appears in Gaius Plinius Secundus's "Historia Naturalis", (it is not pseudo-latin as we erroneously wrote last time). Plinius suggested we take everything with a grain of salt...